Gamertell

The US Army has set up a new project office for videogaming, indicating it is very serious about using gaming technology for training purposes.  Don’t think, however, that soldiers will be partaking in countless hours of causal gaming.

Col. Miller, director of the newly established Training and Doctrine Command’s Project Office for Gaming, made it clear that the army had not turned to video games for entertainment purposes but for making training simulations more visually immersive and believable. This is what he had to say to TSJ Online:

I haven’t seen a game built for the entertainment industry that fills a training gap, we will focus on the visualization piece of those technologies, not so much the entertainment piece.

The new project office was a response to the fact that army units were spending training funds on commercial video games. This new project office will now be able to provide the necessary training tools that incorporate appropriate gaming technology to the army units. The Army’s training simulation toolkit will come bundled with user-side mod ability, allowing soldiers and units to customize it so they can train according to the specified task or scenarios. The toolkit is expected to be deployed by the US Army between 2012 and 2015.

Not everyone seems to be impressed, however, and a skeptical Army simulation contractor, who chose to remain anonymous, told Wired that the army had shot itself in the foot as army units might still be forced to buy commercial games due to prevalent army bureaucracy, which might make it difficult for them to lay hands on the tool kit.

Read [Wired] Via [Game Politics] Also Read [TSJ]